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Topic: Orthodoxy in America (Read 598 times)

Why aren't all Orthodox Churches in the States under the under the jurisdiction of the Orthodox Church in America? Here in Phoenix the Greeks,Serbs, Antiochians, and Russians have their own church buildings, but I was wondering why don't they have the same bishop? I know cultural heritage is important but is there the necessity to have various bishops to have jurisdiction over the same area ? Has this caused problems before?

Why aren't all Orthodox Churches in the States under the under the jurisdiction of the Orthodox Church in America? Here in Phoenix the Greeks,Serbs, Antiochians, and Russians have their own church buildings, but I was wondering why don't they have the same bishop? I know cultural heritage is important but is there the necessity to have various bishops to have jurisdiction over the same area ? Has this caused problems before?

Being Catholic, once you can tell everyone here why the Catholic Church has overlapping bishops in the United States for Roman Catholics, Ukrainian Catholics, Ruthenian Catholics, Melkites, Maronites, Romanian Catholics, etc., well, that is probably the same answer.

There is a long history that explains why the Eastern Orthodox Church in this land is administratively organized anomalous to the canons. There was a glorious mission to Alaska by the Church of Russia beginning in 1794. Upon the sale of Alaska to the U.S., the Russian Church moved its headquarters in North America to San Francisco in 1870. Although the Russian Church was establishing churches across America, but mostly in the West, it became overwhelmed with parishes joining this Russian Church's diocese from the Byzantine Rite of the Roman Catholic Church, but up through 1917, this diocese remained committed to a unified Eastern Orthodox Church structure in North America. St. Tikhon, Patriarch of Moscow and Enlightener of North America was the bishop of this diocese at the turn of the 20th century and outlined his plan for the church in this regard to the Holy Synod in St. Petersburg. Many of the ethnic groups, especially the Greeks, were establishing fraternal organizations that were hiring priests from the old country to serve their communities, independent from the Russian Orthodox Greek Catholic Metropolia, fearing "Russification." In 1917, the Bolshevik Revolution ended the half million dollar support to this diocese, and the disintegration of the Patriarchate of Moscow resulted in law suites over parish facilities here in America. American Orthodox were not being established as a mission off a church. By coincidence, a dynamic Metropolitan of Athens and Archbishop of All Greece established a Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of N & S. America before a visit he made here in 1918. He began to organize the Greek communities into church communities under this new archdiocese; this archdiocese came under the Ecumenical Patriarchate in 1922. This established the pattern of the establishment of overlaping American diocese by the mother churches abroad. Just bringing these communities into an ecclesial organization was an overwhelming task in itself. Despite rhetoric to the contrary, this is a status quo that remains today. From 1960 to 2010, the Standing Conference of Orthodox Bishops in the Americas (SCOBA) served to foster pan-Orthodox work and coordination. However, since 2010, the Holy Orthodox Churches set up a procedure for resolution of the canonically anomalous organization of the churches which are in the areas not covered by the geographical boundaries of the Holy Orthodox Churches, which resulted in this region as the Assembly of Canonical Orthodox Bishops of North and Central America (ACOB), which is charged with designing an organizational structure in this region. This doesn't answer the question as to why so many churches are not under the Orthodox Church in America. That's for another post at another time.

A more elaborate description of the history that led to the lack of recognition of the OCA as "The Autocephalous Orthodox Church in America" is contained in a post I wrote on July 4th of this year, go to "General Forums/Christian News/Re. Two OCA-EP joint Liturgies" The topic is on Page 5 of Christian News.